Collaboration between writer director Michael Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s team of 30 stop motion animators. Originally a 2005 sound play for three actors, animation was a low budget option that has won awards.

 

Portraying the crisis of Michael Stone a motivational speaker on improving customer service. He believes all people apart from himself are just one person, Fregoli Delusion. One actor voiced all parts except for Stone and Lisa and all the puppets were alike. His overnight stay in the Hotel Fregoli, reminded me of Sartre’s existentialist novel, Nausea (1). Stone’s books were at the root of the corporate anonymity and meaningless ‘trained’ conversations with hotel staff highlighting his own inability to exist until Lisa, who is ‘different’ comes along.

 

The figures themselves have 3D printed faces to give the details of subtle expression changes, this ‘reality’ juxtaposed with the doll like nature of the figures creates an uncanny tension. Some reviewers have acknowledged their identification with, and believability in, the characters. (Robbie Collin D Telegraph 9.3.16)

The sex scene appears more natural and identifiable with than many with live actors and is very different from animated sex scenes on the internet. But the twist at the end implies that his relationship with the docile, Lisa may have been a fantasy, a sort of reverse sublimation in the form of a speaking, part-doll that he bought in a sex shop as a gift for his young son.

This film relates to my research into human projection onto objects, the development of the sentient android and its integration into the human consciousness.

 

1 Sartre, J.-P. (2000) Nausea (Penguin modern classics). London: Penguin Books. In-line Citation: (Sartre, 2000)

 

Images

Film stills and publicity photographs from Anomalisa website.